Lefty

by Vernona Gomez and Lawrence Goldstone (Ballantine)

The disconcerting sweetness that suffuses this biography of the Depression-era Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Gomez comes not only from its period but from the author’s account of her parents’ fifty-six-year marriage. The movielike romance between Gomez, a fireballing California farmboy and comic, and June O’Dea, a featured Broadway dancer-showgirl, made headlines in its day, and the energy and humor of their shared life emerges in a rush of innings, famous names, and anecdote. (Asked by a rookie who had just surrendered a monster homer to Ted Williams how he would have pitched, Gomez said, “Under an assumed name.”) Vernona Gomez—Lefty was Vernon—does not elide dark sectors that include alcoholism and the death of a child, but what’s clear in her account is the easy affection that connected celebrities and the rest of us in a less ironic time. ♦

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